DVD/Blu-ray: Choose a Dinosaur, Reenact a Movie

It's that time of the week again. New DVDs and Blurays are out tomorrow which means it's time for a poll. Woohoo. Your answers are totally binding. We begin with the big one, Jurassic World.

Choose your Jurassic death

1. Swallowed by a Mosasaurus

2. Snatched by a Pteranodon

3. Hunted by Indominus Rex & Velociraptors

Poll Maker

 

More new releases / Questions for the comments...

Going Clear: Scientology & The Prison of Belief in which Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney takes on the Church of Scientology, its cadre of lawyers and imprisoned celebrities.
Q 1: Which famous Scientologist do you think is the actual craziest person IRL: Cruise, Travolta, or Kirstie Alley? 

Paper Towns after the success of Fault in Our Stars everything John Green is going to get greenlit. 
Q 2: Cara Delevigne. Yay or Nay?

Testament of Youth Alicia Vikander and Kit Harrington fall in love & despair during World War I. (Reviewish)
Q 3: Do you think Vikander called up Chastain for advice on how to survive a 7 film year?

The Wolfpack the popular documentary about a group of homeschooled brothers who learned about the outside world only from the movies. (Review)
Q 4: Which movie could you reenact/quote from heart?

Z for Zachariah the apocalypse is never going out of style at the movies. Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Chris Pine might be the only people left on earth. Good thing that when they repopulate the Earth all humans will be super duper beautiful moving forward. (Review)
Q 5: Which two movie stars would you be okay with as the last two people with you on Earth?

Peaky Blinders: Season 1 1920s set crime drama with Helen McRory, Cillian Murphy and Sam Neill
Q 6: If you've seen it is it worth our time? 

Linkwire

• Film Grimoire bookmarking this "on location" series since I'm going to London soon and there's lots of fun places from famous movies
• You Must Remember This Karina Longworth researches Hollywood's first openly gay star William Haines (way back in the silent era) 
• The Guardian on Spear, the "Australia's first indigenous dance film" - we wanna see
• Quartz a photographers new project "edits" out smartphones showing us our lonely new world of disconnection

 

• Variety checks in with sales of Mexico's Oscar hopeful 600 Miles feat. Tim Roth
• ICYMI <-- we previously covered the foreign submissions w/ recognizable stars like Roth
• Buzzfeed Dreamboat Aaron Tveit sings stripped-down "Defying Gravity" from Wicked
• Playbill looks at Broadway's oldest living leading ladies: Lansbury and Rivera aren't the only ones
• AV Club childhood memories of Willow (1988) and an adult revisit
• i09 the first image from The War of the Planet of the Apes looks familiar 
• i09 on the superheroes that should get TV series rather than movies. Okay, I'd watch She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel.
• i09 Captain America is outraging conservatives again, who forget that he's always been a political character
• Variety The 33 and Where to Invade Next added to growing AFI Fest. Nathaniel and Anne Marie will cover this last minute Oscar nom -seeking festival for you as usual. 
• Forbes YouTube's highest earning stars. I feel so removed from this wing of showbiz that it always startles me to realize that a) there are famous people that I wouldn't recognize even if they were standing right in front of me screaming their name and b) those same people are NOT from sports or reality television... the other areas to which I am blind

Lukewarm Off Presses
• Page Six I somehow missed this story of Daniel Craig getting in hot water with Sony execs with his repeated groaning about having to play James Bond again. But I like it. (It sucks when you have to work once every three years for shitloads of money, right). In related 'anything else!' news, Craig has signed on for a new production of Othello on the stage. He'll be playing Iago to David Oyelowo's Othello.

Celebrity Pic o' the Day

A photo posted by garret dillahunt (@garretdillahunt) on Oct 17, 2015 at 7:09pm PDT

An excellent idea, prolly.

Garret Dillahunt is a marvelous actor and though Hollywood likes him best as a sinister possibly dim psycho (The Road, Amazon's Hand to God), he's just as good at decent if ineffectual lawmen (Winter's Bone and No Country For Old Men) and has proved his comedy bonafides on television in Raising Hope and The Mindy Project and also does stage work. In short: we are fond of him and he has more range than the roles he's offered. This great selfie he posted yesterday is exactly how it feels to watch him in his most unnerving roles, though. Love his caption "An excellent idea, prolly" Heh! 

The Star Wars Poster Awakens

After brief consideration of an annotated poster, The Film Experience's official position is that we actually don't know enough about the new Star Wars (by choice!) nor do we want to do the research so as to insure some sense of discovery in the the movie theater. Most of you weren't born yet but I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater and I cannot tell you the seismic jolt that shook the sold out theater during the "Luke, I am your father" business. Filmmakers and even marketers used to understand the power of a good surprise in a crowded room.

Nevertheless one can't help but look! Surely you agree. After the jump, thoughts I had (uncensored as they arrived...)

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: A Tale of Love and Darkness

Manuel here checking in with Natalie Portman. We know her Jane Got A Gun project has been battling some sort of curse of bad luck every since it began shooting (after endless behind-the-scenes kerfuffles, it apparently comes out next February) but her other project from this year is A Tale of Love and Darkness, her directorial debut.

The film premiered at Cannes to muted (one might say mixed?) reactions. And while it has yet to be picked up for distribution, we finally got a first look at the film in the form of a(n English-subtitled) trailer. Yes, the film is entirely in Hebrew, so Portman (née Neta-Lee Hershlag) gets to show off yet another set of skills, ones slightly less contestable than her ballet-dancing ones.

And so, while I know exactly where I lie, I’m going to go ahead and give it the YES/NO/MAYBE SO treatment in full.

Click to read more ...

Ask Nathaniel

Let's do another Q & A round. You know what to do in the comments. Bonus points for spooky creepy scary supernatural movie themed questions that get us in the mood for Halloween